


Stitches and Stones

by fireflyingby



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Anti-Hero, Castles, Courtship, Fantasy, M/M, Manipulation, Politics, Scheming, Sorcerers, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-01 23:37:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4038976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyingby/pseuds/fireflyingby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Name, wit, power, status - now plaything and pawn to his once rival, a mad sorcerer has a season to recover his memories and the joys of kingmaking. Taming his pet cat might take longer by far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Restarting an older project - fingers crossed it goes well.

"Trade you," a cracked skull coaxed with sweetness, when the Soothspeaker peered overboard for the ring piece that'd slipped him in the river, "Trade you your eyes for it."

Wretched thing, leaving cadavers in running water - they never returned silver. Wretched, wretched, wretched thing.

Blood, bone, bile and bait.

These were the pretty deaths, with rot-remains scuttling in waves run cruel by cold, these were the deaths with iron eyes and wayward fingers. Beneath dark waters, tired corpses swayed, a wealth of them stilled from rise, lulled to sleeping. The river cradled.

Magic weavers, tributes to the war, defilers to their scenery. They had woken before. They would wake again. Those born to power never faded, but only waited and wept – someone _thought_ so. Someone had thought-thought-thought-and-foretold, and the Soothspeaker _thought_ , no, he _supposed_ , it was very much vile that some ranked fools scribed absurdity on scrolls, yet he was prohibited from tearing the paper. The corpses beneath agreed. One of them had whispered so.

Their ferryman paid them little mind: not when the boat shook under a dead man's hand, not when their oars were claimed, and they lingered afloat, at the edge of abyss. He stood tall, a willow bending, and he clutched his ragged coat close to while him against the chill. But then, the greyed shores were coming, and his deed would soon be done: he had crossed them the Silent River, in a feat of steeled nerves and of the mettle of his ship, and beyond heavy mists, a moonless night drew near.

It was the intendant who wrenched the Soothspeaker away from the boat's rim, before claws could mete gashes in the fall of his white robes, before they could scratch. A clever man, more skin and fat and greetings than teeth, who'd introduced himself once, perhaps mere days before - perhaps a lifetime, when the Soothspeaker's thoughts had been an opiate-born haze, more whimpers than cunning.

He remembered more now, remembered slivers of assumption his body would betray on occasions of fear, felicity, frustration. He remembered (but slowly) that he should not wish to drown.

"I thought," and the intendant never quite _thought_ , but danced, impossibly for a man part lout, on the edge between urge and order, "you might want a few steps back. Can't be taking a dip, can we, now? Well, can we? Eh?" Could the Soothspeaker? Might have he? Should have he? Miraculous. Ten days' glistening eternity of think-think-think-and- _live_ , and words had been artlessly, audaciously, unspeakably tormented around him, with only a slippery claim on meaning.

There was nothing to say. It was the intendant who has stolen him from the Keep, the intendant who had combed his long hair and passed him his sweet wine and given him silks, the intendant who had watched his sleep and led his steps and shown him the world in hard journey for ten days on each moon's count.

_Think-think-think-thoughts-and-brink, we all sink, the weather's kindly._ Kindly, because the Soothspeaker had pursued the outline of a cloud and found it lacking a frown, or teeth and tongue and shouts, or a spear. He very much didn't like spears, not their metal in his flesh, eating, eating, eating, not their wood, consuming, not their poison, all-devouring. They'd given him a spear on the battlefield, a pretty, fierce castle-forged spear, an absolute truth in pointy tips and steel, contingent on fancy, and he'd fancied it much, yes, oh yes, oh yes, had fancied it in the back of him, where the shoulders met to burn and the sinew to die, and the bones, in chalk and marrow and well-sculpted greed, to _fancy_ the delusion that they shouldn't, couldn't, wouldn't possibly break. Until they did. That had been – unseemly. Unseemly, like letting the intendant while a second longer without the Soothspeaker's answer.  
"It'd ruin your coat," the man said slowly, with a letter master's bearing, "And it's a fancy one. It cost the Crown a few good coins. Don't you like it? It's white, you like white. Pretty and white. Come on, smile. Smile for the choice coat. You liked it plenty a few hours ago, didn't you? You did. I saw it with my own eyes." And the intendant nodded the ferryman's way, searching approval, "Trust me, my man, he likes it."

The coat was a cloak with thread of gold and white beneath it, and more velvet straps than the Soothsayer knew to bind, and fewer, he had learned, than the intendant would have cared for; far fewer, and the man drew every string taut, hissed so close that the Soothspeaker wondered, for a moment, whether he'd venture the crown of scars that came with a bite to the jugular.

"Damn me and damn this river, you'll catch a sickness," muttered the intendant, "It's what we need now, you with a sickness. The Lord Commander needs to see you… appealing, not - _just_ what we need now."

What they needed was a hard wind to bring them ashore, and the one that served kept company with sleet. The Soothspeaker caught it, the cold of it greater on knuckle and bone than he had heard it in night tales. 'Snow.' He kissed it, knowing by the anticipating prickle of his lips that he had done so before, and found the affection wanting. It behaved no more the generous lover, but the heady burn of it on skin afforded the Soothspeaker a proprietary pleasure. 'Cold,' 'river,' 'boat,' 'snow.' He had learned much today.

He'd already known to hate the nearing dark stone of the oldest standing fortress of the land, because Everdaine was mighty and looming and bland and a little bit like a traitor in their midst, the one who wouldn't burn. Impossibly, wouldn't burn. The cloak was tightened against him once more, clasp over clasp, broken, then fastened again. He took ill with ease, they'd told him. He took ill, then fed a fever, and whiled in sickbeds for full seasons, as was the want of idle flesh made more for pleasing the eye than for the toils of any labour.

'Sickness,' 'labour,' 'idleness.' Soothspeaking had taught him those.

There came kindly hands upon him, fumbling, and friendly and futile; he would strive to remember to miss the intendant, to think-think-think-and- _remember_. The man's pale blue eyes fall uneasily downcast, when he set them both on quiet land, barren and dry.

The ferryman never bade his farewells.

_Return me my ring, if you find it_ , the Soothspeaker meant to call after him, but the warm hand on his hair gave distraction.

"Look at you, pretty like a doll. You be good now," the intendant whispered, gentle, and he downed the Soothspeaker's hood before shepherding him towards a fury of liveried men in stymied motion, "You be good now, and they'll wring your neck fast, eh?"

'Neck,' the Soothspeaker considered, and caressed his own to find it long and frail and the skin fraught, yielding to nail. Oh, necks. Hmmm - yes. Those. He'd clawed off a few.

-

**E** nvoys from beyond the river, envoys from the crown. The word spread like wildfire, and yet the Soothspeaker barely spied lips move. The river bodies, he supposed. The castle keepers must have taught cadavers to whisper for pay, an old practice as abhorred and silently accepted as any bastard child born of utility and urgency and the want of alternative.

"Be you welcome to fort Everdaine," someone stopped from talking behind their backs long enough to say to their faces, before they were bartered the sensual silhouette of a main road for the uneasy seduction of underground rubble. ‘Sensual.’ ‘Seductive.’ These were, the guard seemed to think, good words the likes of the Soothspeaker should learn.

There was a practical impetus to their discovery of the citadel's tight, elusive, and _humid_ passageways that compensated for its strategic oversight.

"The gates were cursed shut with the last siege," the lieutenant of the night's guard revealed it. "If you want in or out now, you go with the rats." He walked with the frail step of a man who had not always been thick of arm and broad of chest and high of rank, and who meant no offence by his new ownership. Happily, it followed that he was given the lion’s share of a wide berth, and, tugging the ends of his cape, only the Soothspeaker walked close in his shadow. It was a fine, noble shadow, wisps and nothings, and reflection and refraction mutilated by opacity. The Soothspeakers would call it Herve, and his, and he cooed at it often.

"There's such a beastly chill here," the intendant murmured, but refused an offer for stringent alcohols. They were seven in their travel - two wanderers, three infantrymen and the captain and his thin blue wrist band, who led - and at least one was to keep a clear head.

"Is what it is and what the gods gave, and what the Commander gave after'em," said the keeper of their torch, fire light carving a hard contrast across a pale face marked by pox. It wasn't every man who nodded with him; it wasn't, because the Soothspeaker forgot to, turning to feel at the edge of flame, gasping at warm lace in brown that spread over his fingers. Pretty patterns, butterflies in bruises.

" _Careful_ ," warned another guard in his ear, lips shying short of flesh. He looked at the Soothspeaker with the vacuous eyes of the drowned rat on which the thin leather of his shoes had scratched earlier, as if liquor, chills and ennui had bred carnal entitlement and worldly insight. _Pretty like a doll_. He wondered, briefly, whether the intendant had stitched him well enough at the joints to withstand use beyond display.

"We were stationed South of the river," the lieutenant carried on, "but the Commander called all troops moved from mainland, when this frigid old bitch needed manning. He said there's been no trouble on the border for eight years, we've still got duty, might as well do housekeeping."

With a broom and some cloth and soap boiled from fatty flesh. With clean, incisive hate of a war eight years gone that silly little plaything soldiers never tasted. The Soothspeaker had. The Soothspeaker found it – salty. Blood salt.

"Now, we're stuck nursing ruins." The lieutenant, again.

Water carved a depraved empire at their feet. Underground, catacombs. Broken aqueducts, and a river nearby. _This is where the poison goes, when you want their supplies waned_. Stuffy air scorched the Soothspeaker's lungs; he stopped to raise the ends of white robes before a puddle - it was a pretty cloak, he'd negotiated a mild affection for it – and jumped over, because free falls had the illicit appeal that if he slipped now, now, here, hurry, _now_ , he'd wreck his throat before they could take the bother.

It was the captain of the guard who caught him by the arm, short and stout and worse for time's wear, a dog's jaw and his teeth. He was showing them, yellowed at sharp points, to the lieutenant. "You wash your damned tongue, and you bite it after. The old maid's good stone. Got good stone in this fortress."

"It's what I'm saying," and this time, the lieutenant _did_ say it. "They all wanted her open, didn't they? The Three Knights Who Fell, the Reapers from South, the travellers. The White Prince gave her siege for weeks. And she kept herself closed and tight, like the legs of an old maid."

The old maid might perhaps have been the captain's family. He defended it, "Everdaine ain't one of your whores."

"It's no castle keep," said a man from the back, and the Soothspeaker wrenched free of hands and holds, because there was keeping, and there was the Keep, and he refused, would not, did not, could not –

Could not peel himself away like the dead skin off his burned fingers before the captain had him again. The captain, who growled at his men, "Gave you better than a castle keep did. Gives you sup, gives you wine, gives you iron. You came'ere, none of you could hold a sword. Not one. You – Dobithian." A jolt of red hair, and the poxed man turned a guilty glance. The captain, Merland grinned at him. "Cut through three scabbards before you could draw proper. They gave me a woodcutter, turned him good. You were fucking deer in Fireste before the old maid took you in. Made a man out of you."

"Captain," said the man, Dobithian, flushing.

"No one means ill by it, Captain." The lieutenant took over, conciliatory. "But Everdaine's watching still water now. It's all it does, it's all we do. There's no trouble on the border that needs so many men. We're wasting here. Don't mind our saying so."

Merland minded. "Break all your damned backs, is what I should've done. All of yours. Pack of beggars. Sick of you like them was of the plague. Sick of all of you." He spat on ground at their feet, spat over stone. "Get on. Leave the torch. Be telling the Commander there's a messenger."

There were seven stares in sharing but no opposition. What was it, what was the word the Soothspeaker wants, what was it, it danced, demons, dare, Dobithian – dissent. Dissent among ranks.

"He's with the ambassador from Elem. He'll take a while to come," said the lieutenant, but took his four men and no torch and he left, slithered, faded. Shooed. The Soothspeaker waved the lieutenant's shadow away, Goodbye, Herve, goodbye, so long.

-

**A** pretty scenery of stone, if not for the brute with the light and the steel also holding the rancour. They trailed away with a long silence, the intendant's soft hands breaking under fuss, like a game of cards prolonged too long by trickery. Finally, "Apologies. We hardly meant… hardly knew…"

"You're not from here," Merland barked out, shook his head at the Soothspeaker's inciting 'Woof.' His mouth gave a hard line, taunted invisibility with the hope of merger. "Them's not from here either, but they came and stayed. Took bread from here, took salt. You? You say what you want. But Everdaine took them louts in when they crawled in with just their breeches, they better hold their mouths."

They walked long. Longer, the Soothspeaker supposed, than minutes drawled in an hour, conversing with the sibling tongues of the clock that kept their toll. Whatever path the lieutenant had taken, this was not its spread, and it occurred to the Soothspeaker to be gravely upset that they trotted underneath dirt and in it and chanced muddying his robes, all for the wild sake of a polite diversion, so that the Commander Ramsey could be announced (again?) that he'd be receiving and make arrangements. Naughty. Very, very naughty. He should tell, oh, the Soothspeaker should tell, he should tell the Keep Master, who'd raise his cane, but not his voice, no, never, never to grieve the ear, only the skin, never make a sound of –

Mewling. Something, somewhere, mewls. It brutalized the sense of harmony the Soothspeaker could only ever achieve by a denial of setting and true organic existence: existence was a volatile thing. There existed rock, there existed corpses, some in spirit and in his escort, and there existed mewling. He fell in search, before the intendant could protest, dragged himself on hands and knees and shifting ground – and he encountered it, far too close to the wall, coaxed it out. It was small in his hold, and whiter than his robes, and loud, when Merland brought the torch behind him.

"Cat," named the intendant tiredly over the Soothspeaker shoulder, "It's called a 'cat.' "

It was called a dollop of meat with maggots in wait, should the Soothspeaker abandon it. He knew dead things. He could tell.

The captain followed, close by. "And them littler things you'll be seeing on it, them's called 'fleas.'"

_It's too small for them_ , the Soothspeaker meant to say, _too young and it's been running from your rats._ The cat left a warm weight on his chest, when he raised it, settled, heartbeat so strong, as if defying the rest of it in proportion.

" 'Cat,'" the intendant enunciated clearly, "Won't you say it with me? 'Cat.'" Then he sighed, apologetic to a fault. "He says it sometimes, if you ask nicely."

Merland helped the Soothspeaker up again, pulled, in the right way, and set them all in fresh motion. "Straight from the Keep?" There was enough silence to pass for agreement, enough to encourage camaraderie. Merland's hand passed before the torch. The captain's blue wrist band showed its age in wear, but the embroidery held: a token to the provider of a spellworker of a keep, so the crown should know to search his home and do well by his family, following death. This band was wrapped twice around a thick arm, tense. "Mmm. Had me a brother in a Keep." 

The intendant paled. "Did you? Good mercy…"

"He got what was his to get," Merland said, with the peculiar inclination for suffering through every word as if he resented it, "He raised the weapon against his lord. Got some blood on him. Had himself luck, he's got the…the spellwork?" The magic, the blood, the gifts old and new, the art for which men of nothing made station. "He's got that. Sweet boy, raised him with my two hands. Had all that and wasted it. They said, a year in the Keep, or a hanging at dawns. Chose the Keep. Came back half a man, but he's alive and his mind's mending." When the captain shrugged, his armour seemed to barely weigh, "Can't mend no broken neck."

It was a long moment's crawl until the intendant dared. "What do they do to them there?"

Merland didn't hide the frown. "You never asked'im?"

The Soothspeaker experienced the prudish displeasure of being stared at as if he'd only now been born before them. The intendant had asked; briefly, the man appeared to consider asking again. But then he pursed his lips. "He's not much for telling."

"Won't be one for it from now on either," said Merland, and swept the Soothspeaker's hair out of his face the same way he might've appeased a precious pet, "But this one's tame. You're good, aren't you? There's a lad."

There was a friendly, but firm push to the Soothspeaker's shoulder that hinted being a _better_ lad might've resulted in a bit of amiable disembowelment.

The intendant, for once, had no objection to mistreatment. "Oh, he's a handful."

The captain's laughter was raspier than the Soothspeaker had expected. "You say? Doesn't look it." And the captain's humour withered faster, as well. "They make'em quiet the dead. The unwieldy ones. It's them and the corpses, all day and all night." And all day, and all night, and all day, and all fright. "Don't think there's much left to be right in their heads after."

The Soothspeaker didn't smile with that; he did it later, when the captain revealed a door to the upper levels, to fresh air and a flattering light that captured the dainty stroke of the Soothspeaker's hand on the back of the - his cat. _Pretty, like a doll._ There was a power to that.

Dog that he was, Merland smiled senselessly. "My brother? Used to be he'd stare out the window all day, and he'd fight if you moved him. Then some time he'd tug at this- " The wrist band up, again. " - when I'd go by, and that's how I'd know he was done and he needed me. For eating. Walking. Pissing. Took guessing. This one looks simpler."

"Yes," said the intendant without heat, taking the first step out of the passageways, "I hear Lord Ramsey likes things simple."

-

**W** hat they'd found in the tunnels to be darkness, water and straight lines, was in the fortress proper a blight of light, aridity and solid doors at every third, fourth step. Gate, gate, gate, wood made hate, barriers and courtesy and a message subtly delivered that the intimacy of any encounters was conditional on a nobleman's permission. The Soothspeaker liked doors, and his cat more so, and they both pressed their cheeks against the oak of one, when he leaned in. The cat, to the Soothspeaker's great envy, purred better.

"Beg pardon, m'lords," the lieutenant shouted out to the listeners beyond, and if at any point following arrival the captain and his men had been meant to reconcile, their differences were possibly-probably-preferably handled after the seeming Everdaine tradition of letting everything rot away.

They stood before the once reception rooms, now turned strategy halls, and they did, as courtiers should, their waiting.

"Here with the castle envoy," the lieutenant announced.

Cackling preceded movement, the metallic echo of a cup hitting the floor. The door slept on, closed.

Then a light voice, not yet done with laughter: "And the castle bribe."

"Again?" A softer, more sober friend.

The Soothspeaker tested theory with the practice of a few knocks and met instant reply.

"Come, come, let's not be in haste." The amused one again. "Remember they sent an orgy last time. We were fond of the orgy. Not very fond of the itching it brought after, but fond of the orgy. Ask them."

More fumbling. "Caim, they won't tell me - "

" _Ask_ ," urged Caim.

Rust at the hinges caressed the door from a subtle shift of air to a burgeoning screech: it opened just enough to relinquish the modest sight of a thick chain, one blue eye dulled with worry and a generous mouth smarting from restrained protest. Behind them, gold wreathes spread on each great wall. "Do you bring an orgy?"

The intendant, who had been reduced to obscurity throughout recent travel, found himself the sudden target of every eye in the corridor, and some beyond it. He also looked on the verge of collapse, or feasting on his rings and the knuckles beneath. "No..."

"…it's not an orgy," confirmed the blue eye.

"Send it back," said Caim, but the friend gave objection. "Wait – wait. Who gives the gift?"

The intendant stepped forward. "The crown."

A pause, then Caim. "Which of them?"

They spoke of it even in a Keep: three crowns, three kings, three choices: Cassian, bastard heir and hero of the border wars, his trueborn lesser brother, a leech, and their moderate cousin. And everyone, simply everyone, except perhaps Caim, who was far too simple for the Soothspeaker's taste – like peaches, too ripe, like summer – knew Cassian ruled the continent.

"Shhhh," the blue eye said reasonably, "that's high treason."

"Yes, very well, but _which_ king?"

The intendant managed a discreet cough. Then, he recited, "From Cassian, His Grace anointed, to Julius Ramsey, Lord Commander. I bring a gift, and I bring papers of dismissal, and it is the Commander's say of which he'll have, eh?"

It was more than enough for men of the guard to shed strife and find each other with wide-eyed looks of alarmed askance.

And it was barely enough to see their door open in full.

-

**E** verdaine was no seat to kings, and the reception halls'd never held thrones - but they were exceptionally large rooms with tall domes and arches and the summer scent of heady spice and orange peel turned to colour and wood carvings. Light played above, where water did beneath, and both drowned.

The Soothspeaker shouldn't drown, oh, he shouldn't. He'd want to pay mind to that.

There was also gold, more gold than there were maps, more maps than there was space for sitting. The Soothspeaker took his on marbled floors, while the intendant – who introduced himself again as Orpherithus – exchanged greetings with two men deeply engaged, first with a board of _thet_ , then with three decanters of wine, then, finally, with the Soothspeaker.

It was the slighter of the two who reached first, dark-faced with darker curls and blue-blue-iron eyes, and a timid hand ill at place under a cascade of rich red velvet. He crouched, paying the pillars of soldiers near him no mind, to thumb the Soothspeaker's lips and chin, the line of his jaw.

He sobbed, "Gods that be…"

_There are no gods for you, sir_ , the Soothspeaker decided, _For you sing-speak and stay low, and so you are a grasshopper. A grasshopper, hoppity-hop-hope, like the thing your caress offers now, except it will be rescinded soon, resolute._ He wondered what grasshoppers ate. Him, he expected. His patience.

The cat stirred awake in the Soothspeaker's arms, curled lazily on his chest, enjoyed a pale of breeze and new shade. Its caster had the look of sunbathed health, an athlete's build, the golden colouring of distant provinces. This, by the loud laughter of him, was Caim.

"Not – again," Caim said, and sipped from the cup he'd brought with, only to find it soon without, "Aubert, I claim the rest of the wine. I want to be – impossibly. Drunk. When Julius sees this."

Julius, a name like the chalk of helpless protests dense between the Soothspeaker's teeth. Aubert's hand fell from jaw to neck, divested the Soothspeaker's hood, the laces, the strings that trained collar against steadfast descent.

"By light, the skin's fine making," he whispered, as if assurance might have led the Soothspeaker to breaking. Aubert clicked his tongue. "This is excellent, excellent making. Look at the likeness. Look how close it is. I thought the portraits were burned. Must have cost a fortune…"

"And all of it," Caim said, fishing under the maps on the floor, "in kingly tears. Imagine that talk, 'Oh, Mr. Guild Summoner, sir, I'm dreadfully sorry, but won't you please help me get a taste of sweet milk fresh from borderland cock? Oh, please? Pretty do please? I'm ever so thirsty.' "

What he looked for must have been a second cup, for all the pleased giggling that came with finding it. The decanter flew to fill the pair, less in metaphor of speed, more in the air. The guard lieutenant gave the porcelain a discreet push, until it tipped to yield a better flow of wine.

Aubert's blue glance bore close enough on the Soothspeaker to almost crumble the vision of his inching frown. "Caim, come here. Look at this. It's superb. I didn't think they'd come so far with golems, but the flesh is superb."

"Is it?" Steps away, Caim looked part of the golden montage, if more incredulous. "So's the wine."

"Truly… truly, authentic and… aged to… aged to an ideal - "

"Now _that_ is not this wine."

Inexplicably, there was a draft. There was a draft, because Aubert's wrenched himself away, and the cat clawed through the rest of the fastenings upkeeping the hood, and the Soothspeaker, of course, took to ill and to chill with ease. Aubert captured, for a moment, the Soothspeaker's pale hair at his nape, as if to judge the look of it cut, squinted. Then, "It's… him."

There was a long pause, before Caim tested waters the guardsmen seemed to realize too deep to try by way of question, "Aubert."

"No. No, listen." The Soothspeaker listened, but it was not enough. Not for Aubert, not for his clenching grip. "I tell you, it's him."

Caim laughed. "Truly? Aubert, the stuff's strong." He drank again, anyhow. "How many cups have you had?"

"Not enough to not know him."

Caim made a displeased sound. "No one knew him. Not one man, or he'd not have left."

They were fools and not alone and the intendant was watching, and the captain, and his men, and there was a name between them, a name to overrule them all, and that man, the man they want, that man was not here. Might not have ever been. Wouldn't be. Like the metal blades scraping at the Soothspeaker's mind, the ones that wrote, 'Wake up,' and 'Danger.'

"Fine," Caim broke the silence with an exasperated sigh, "Call a wraith. You go and you call a wraith, and once it's found the summon seals and gobbled the bloody thing down, _you_ tell Julius why his royally packaged target is short of limbs and head."

The intendant objected.

The guardsmen objected to the intendant's objection to their Lord Commander's friends' objectionable objective.

The Soothspeaker, as Aubert's hands weave darkness in wind that never had been but now came to be as ice-cold teeth in his flesh, said nothing at all.

These were the wraiths, enslaved ghosts of demons-once living, thin tendrils of smoke his lungs'd never seduce to fits of coughing. And this was magic, the Soothspeaker supposed, magic the way of patricians' practice, with sophistry and cleanliness, and pretty gestures of the hand. Magic that crawled under his skin, mesmerized his senses, and left him estranged of the popular delusion that to manifest power from realms beyond was little more than a parlour trick. He didn't know when he released Aubert's spell, only that he caught the headless black snake searching him and twisted its neck before it could hiss in his cat's ear and wake it.

"Caim," said Aubert, part in the fatigue of a spell gone astray, part in triumph.

Caim blinked away stupor, all golden lashes and residual awe. "…no, I. I saw. Damn me. You cast that well?"

Aubert's scowl belied offence. "Yes. It would've fed, if it were a golem. You know what wraiths are like."

Ravenous, even the Soothspeaker could tell.

"Marvellous. It's not a… forgery. Bloody marvellous," said Caim, and seemed, this once, to need his drink, only a cup of his two, before he turned to the intendant. "Do you know what you've brought us?"

The intendant didn't. The intendant had asked. The intendant would be swallowing his rings soon. "They said… they said, the sickly Soothspeaker from the Keep in Lyos."

"The sickly Soothspeaker from Lyos," repeated Caim – dry, where there was wetness in Aubert's eyes, not yet tears. No. Not this. The Soothspeaker was of no mind for this, no whiteness of thought, no fever, no gentle _inclination_ for sentimental rebuttal. This bored him. Terribly.

Aubert stuttered a little, "A… e… Aelius…"

Caim's hand went out in interruption. "Revaris. Since you're so proper about it, should be 'Revaris' now. He was on the cusp of maturity five years ago."

Flaw. Failure. _Wrong_. Five years ago, he'd been a boy under a banner with half the South's army in wait of him, if they meant to be fair. They didn't, beyond the courtesy: the first name for children, the second for adults, the third for chronicles, after the Western fashion. Revaris, now, where he’d always been Aelius before them. Revaris. Steel and pride and the letters they moulded: the Soothspeaker knew little about the name, other than that it was his heritage, that he should recoil from it.

"Revaris," murmured Aubert, stricken, "Right. Forgive me. _Revaris_. It's… Revaris."  
The Soothspeaker felt movement, eerily, as if the world had conspired to not let him erase this episode from memory. The cat looked up from the makeshift alcove of his robes' collar, eyes faint with hunger. He the Soothspeaker – _Revaris_ , all right, yes, well, perhaps, since they insisted – gave it a finger to nip.

Tears. Crumpling. A map in disarray, destruction, under Caim's feet. He came down as Aubert rose.

"So it is," he said, and this time the eyes that stared in Revaris' were old honey, cold. No laughter. "Aelius Revaris Dramaste." Then Caim was up again. He toasted his drink, found the second cup done, tossed it. "Confound this."

Metal hit marble leaving dent, shallow, bounced off the intendant's foot. The man did not pull away. No one of Revaris' escort but the cat made to move at all.

Then, inevitably, someone spoke. "Aelius… Re… White Pri - "

Revaris couldn't well tell who said it first, only that it was there, between them, suddenly, heavily, unmistakeably, like the stain butchering his cloak: "The White Prince."

Caim's hand, pulling Revaris up, was as brisk as his laughter. "Now, how in the world did you ever persuade them of _that_ , I ask you? You were born in a stable. I'm closer to succession than you'll ever be, and I barely earned lordship."

"He sacked Fireste," muttered one of the guardsmen to the next, "he - "

"Fireste and…"

"We know what he did," said the lieutenant, eyes hard. "We're all from Fireste."

Not all, not all, not all, but the captain was a dog tied down, and each pull of his chain brought closer suffocation. It seemed to Revaris that he bid time. Beyond Merland's ethical struggle, the talk turned to the guard's men and their grievance.  
Revaris tilted his head. Sighed. Then counted down to the bloodshed. His.  
 _Five and four._

"I was born there, came back to my house burning," an unranked soldier of grave proportion was saying, but his hand was not on sword yet.

Not so, his companion. "He's the one?" _Three_. "This whore's son?"

Another man – _two_. "You look me in the eye, you – we've got the right to have a head. We have the right to his head."

A murmur of great repugnance among the crowd. _One_. They would draw soon, draw and cut and maim, but not kill, and that moment's clemency wouldn't translate to advantage. Not later. Not when it mattered.

Revaris angered the cat with sudden movement, the long bone of his arm flailing before it gained purchase. The captain looked at him, looked at the eyes he'd let fall to terror. Looked at Revaris' hand, tugging on a blue wrist band. This was a man with a brother, a brother with a sickness, a sickness his own. This was a man who could not bear his own people. This was a man who could give Revaris advantage. It was decided then. There.

"Right you are," said Merland, finally, and stared each soldier down. "Quiet. Men, quiet."

The men did not quiet. The men, also, did not keep their polite distance, and Revaris had a moment, a priceless, deceptive moment, when he eluded scheming for instinct and took claustrophobia over leaving them his open back. He fell back into a corner.

Aubert's untimely gasp decried the intelligence of that choice. "Careful!"

And then, the world was shaking, one step, and another, and a maladroit fall, and the sting of Revaris' cheek, the strain on his neck, when he failed to let his head turn with momentum. It was Dobithian who gave the slap, and Dobithian who had him by the collar, shaking. "Me! You go'n'look me in the eye, you dog, _me_! I had a woman in Fireste."

Dobithian now also had his captain's sword at his throat. "Stand down."

The soldier looked from the captain to the metal biting above his collar, closing on skin. Anger seemed to war with tears. He said, "Had me _children._ "

"All right," agreed the captain, and inserted himself as an able wall between his pack and Revaris. "Stand down."  
"You don't be telling us to stand down before the likes of him!" The tall soldier again, grimacing. This time, it was to his lieutenant's face, a mountain of a man turned into a moment's shackle.

"Steady," muttered the lieutenant, "Steady, he's the captain. This is insubordination. He's _captain_. Steady."

"Captain," repeated the tall soldier, tersely, but light still flickered on the readied line of his drawing sword. Soon, they were four with arms, cautiously aligned in the half measure of a circle. The captain spat at their feet – always spitting, always ugly - missed charts, to Aubert's audible relief – and then he spat again, when the lieutenant made his peace with and joined against him.

"He killed your woman," said Merland, pointing each man with the sword's end, "And he killed your children. But I'll kill you here, if you lay hand on him again without orders. Goes for any of you. He's the Commander's. He _belongs to your Commander._ "

He belonged, Revaris knew, to a spectacular vision, where he was more kin to Merland, than enemy to his men, and where the captain could tell what his brother for once wanted, where he could give it, protection. Stalemate persisted: Merland stood one man against four, but this one with live steel and a badge of captaincy to speak for the higher license to kill.

They reached a point in time after which tension could no longer stiffen a wire, but had to break it from whole to minute thread.

It coincided with stealthy intrusion by way of the door jolted open hard enough by immaculate force to draw wood from its metal hinges. The chain Aubert had restored tore through air in a perfect pendulum's swing.

They came in twelve, men of foreign livery marching at measured step, even the ones whose stiffly set shoulders suggested the strain involved in creating a dramatic entrance. Behind them, dark hair and dark cloth cut a tall, stark figure best improved by the command badge fastened flimsily on an arm made for archery, sooner than sword.

"Let's we pretend I thought the door was locked," said Julius Ramsey with parting revulsion for the silver piece in his hand, "And that it takes precisely as many men to open it, as it does to disarm you."

He tossed his key at Merland's feet.


	2. Chapter 2

Lord Warden and High Commander Julius Ramsey passed justice slowly and with his own honest hand: cups were collected, scrolls righted, maps displaced. The formation of _thet_ sprawling on its abandoned board received overdue consideration. Revaris' cat earned a passing caress. 

Then he turned to his men, and, setting corrected, they finally took cue.

“Commander,” the captain began, “ _Sir_ …”

Julius had the handsome arrogance of a man used to declining flattering proposals. His hand found Merland's shoulder gently. "I don't envy you, having to lie to my face about what you've allowed to happen here."

Moments later, Revaris didn't envy Aubert, caught and held and drowning in a one-sided embrace. "Julius. Thank gods."

"Aubert," Julius greeted. "Thank them later. Lend me coin."

Aubert's fondness met its death with the Lord Commander's fingers diligent in worming their way to his pockets. He looked down alarmed, sputtered, "Now's not the time."

Merland's lieutenant – and oh, that look, that look, that _hook_ , Revaris saw it, saw it gut him and pierce and set him for the wind to dry – agreed, "Sir, begging your leave to - "

Julius peered over his shoulder.

"You beg on your knees, lieutenant. Would it help if we cut your legs at them?" he asked absently, then pulled away from Aubert and smiled, with a raise of his fingers and the shallow glint of gold between them. He waved the coins, one, and two, and three, and four, and – 

_Five_ , Revaris mouthed, and Julius' grin grew earnest in reply. "Caim, bet me. I stake all my pieces."

Caim, who had gone without wine for the better part of an armed conflict and, more severely, that of ten minutes, didn't smile back. "I don't carry."

_Liar_ , but Revaris wasn't one to carry tales. Julius regaled him with a measuring look. "I'll take your belt."

"My belt's worth more than five," Caim protested – loudly, and Revaris covered one ear, hushed himself down, rocked on his heels and sent the cat to anxious mewls. 

Aubert groaned first. "Now's not the time."

Time. Seconds. Horology. Tick – artistry – tack. Tact. Revaris couldn't breathe.

"I disagree," said Julius, parading with the frills of gratuitous, tactile affection, tapping one man on the arm, the next on his shoulder - and Merland, intimately, on his back. 

"Now is the time. Now is when we can observe whether we'll have more blood shed by the captain tasked with enforcing discipline, or by his men, who are sworn to give him obeisance. We can cast a wager on who's failed his duties more." His voice came honey, sinking-sweet. Revaris liked it little. Revaris – he shook, but couldn't prevent it – liked it not.

"Then," Julius obliged with a conclusion, "we can wager again on who'll break first at the flogging post."

He stopped to relieve the intendant of his letters, the royal seal by now staining parchment in limpid wax, weakened by heat. There were swords raised everywhere; one lent its edge, then its cut, and the paper unravelled. Julius read, poised, with an economy of movement that insulted any previous superfluity. Spat at it, like Merland.

The reading meant another wait.

"Aubert," Julius called out finally and consigned the letter to the floor," Fetch your coin purse. If I mean to have that belt, I'll need more than five."

Puzzled, Caim passed a hand over the leather piece at his waist – once red, once right - with paltry intent "This old thing? It's out of court fashions. Really, Julius. What do you want with it?"

"To hang the last man who puts his sword away by it," Julius said, and it wasn't heart-stirring rhetoric, or the dignity of command, but, evenly, it prevailed. The lieutenant sheathed his steel first.

_Cheater_ , and Revaris started to laugh, hard, heartily, hoarsely, _cheater, cheater, cheater, cheater_. Old strategy and cheating. There was a point after which conflict, unsatisfied, dimmed to inertia, a moment in time when tension either erupted, or was eaten to shreds by doubt. Cheater, delaying the men past that threshold. _Cheater_.

"Shhhh, you're scaring your little pet. You don't want that, eh? Shhhh." Soft, gentle hands upon him. This must have been the intendant, reclaiming his merchandise.

Afterwards, over two dozen armed and able men took on the champion's task of caring for the keep with soldierly devotion: some dusted, some swept, most rolled up maps and set them back in leather binders previously eclipsed by paper.

Then, they assembled for inspection. Aubert was fetched a chair. Julius was fetched the _thet_ board. Caim was fetched, somehow, more wine. Revaris was merely fetched.

The Commander's touch goaded the burn of bruise on his cheek, as grey eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Who gave the blow?"

There was a careful silence. Fright deepened the lines in Dobithian's face. "My… m'lord."

Julius appraised him with interest. "Is your wrist weak?"

"Pardon, m'lord?"

"Your wrist," Julius said evenly. "Is it weak? If it isn't, next time, take his teeth." He paused. "But call me to witness it, first."

Then came the matter of insurgence, the first man to have taken arms. He stepped forward, still tall, still terrible. "Sir. I don't apologize."

"Good man," Julius welcomed with a grin, and put his arm over the soldier's shoulder. In profile, the straightness of Julius' nose, the fullness of his lip didn't belong on what became a portrait of sobriety. He made a show of a sigh. "Because I would hate for you to waste breath on apologies, when we flay the skin off your back within the hour."

Skin off the back, skin staled by sun, skin hard and unyielding. It would make good leather for a belt, good, very good, proper and right and Revaris – his hand wavered – stroked the skin of his own cheek, hot still from hurt, thought, _Gloves. It'd make good gloves_. He opened his mouth – dry, sore – to ask Julius if he would please-and-thank-you like a pair.

Julius wasn't by him to suffer asking. Julius was rupturing whatever remained of Merland's pride, keeping him at the door, while the rest of the Everdaine guard took their leave in an orderly line to - the instruction arrived late – yes, the flogging post.

"I want you to know," Julius reassured the captain with a sycophant's kindness, "as you bleed in your bed tonight, and think of how to ruin them, that they didn't turn on you because you fended for a traitor with a pretty face." There was a gasp as Merland has his captaincy badge removed. Julius smiled again, warm. "They did it because in years of command, all you could rouse in them was the respect to get stabbed in your gut and not in your back. Think on that."

Merland reeled, clutching at where his badge once lay, maybe seeking it. He did not leave broken; he seemed to mostly crawl, and Revaris, then, couldn't quite remember: did he choose the captain because he was strong of body, or weak of heart? Did he choose Merland because he'd been _there_?

The badge changed chests under Julius' nimble hand, for all the pick seemed to Revaris unplanned. The new captain staggered under the weight of metal, or office, or perhaps both; his speech was too accented to tell, his thanks too impassioned.

Julius appraised his deed with minute satisfaction. "I'm unacquainted with the martial practices of Elem, but I believe we'll both agree this is an unexpectedly swift promotion for you."

Beside him, Aubert appeared close to a fit of the madness. "Elem, Julius? You take a captain from Elem?"

Julius tilted his head, curious in challenge. "I took my captain from the ambassador's own guard."

"Now, how in the world did you know that you'd need to, before you even walked in? How did you even know Revaris was here?" Caim, disbelieving.

There was no answer. There would be no answer. Revaris had once learned Julius Ramsey wasn't keen on them, not really – and now, he gagged on recollection, barely keeping upright, because _that_ was cheating also.

Farther away, he saw Aubert's lower lip become a white line under tight bite. "You can't think Everdaine guardsmen will take their orders from the foreigners they were fighting until three years ago. That's foolishness."

Silence.

"Perhaps if you hadn't presented Cassian's gift with the opportunity to create a divide between my men," Julius said with the first cut of impatience, "I wouldn't have to take a foreigner. I'm not the one to blame that you've let yourself be used."

For a stretch of time, Aubert stood on the edge of remonstration. He strained in stare, defiance lulling the sharp chin of a heart-shaped face to a tilt. Julius prepared to speak –  
And found a filled cup before him.

"Drink, you dry fishes, drink," called Caim, offering to both.

This used to be due, distracting them, Revaris supposed, then sent a breeze of hot air to provoke the wine in a play of patterns. It amused Aubert enough to claim his cup.

Nearby, Julius passed his wine – and his attention – to his new captain. "Your predecessor came with ten years of Everdaine service and a perfected knowledge of the lay of the land. I don't ask that you become his equal in a fortnight." He let the man have his grateful drink before carrying on, "You have twenty days for that.” He considered. “Now… what's the word I want?"

_Dismissed,_ Revaris murmured again, and the new captain left much like the old, a storm in a glass of sand, soured, but contained.

-

Half an hour later, they were alone, five men and one cat and a raid's ransom in cartography, and the silence took no prisoners. They regrouped, uneasily, on the floor, where Revaris stole warmth and good vantage near a belatedly run fireplace, and mimicked the cat in lazy sprawls, and where the intendant's hand, tender again once the man sat close, passed through his hair. Their hosts contorted unhappily in a predicament of posture, pretending apathy before the temptation of Aubert's chair. No one could be troubled to bring the rest.

"What happens in twenty days?" asked Caim, unhurried in stretch.

Beside him, Julius let his head drift on Aubert's shoulder, in a gesture seeking sleep, or tacit reconciliation. "They're three kings fighting for one especially frightful crown, but only one has a proper army. Either I declare for Cassian in Izanthe, or he invades. He won't wait longer than the minimal time for an envoy to arrive with answer, before the fortuitous appointment of my replacement." 

And he chuckled, intercepting the intendant's stir of protest. "Forgive me. I've stolen your moment. I imagine your prolix delivery of an overdue threat would have carried more stage appeal and dramatic nuance." A thoughtful pause. "Shall we hear it? Twenty days drag. I have time."

The intendant's fingers convulsed over Revaris' forehead; he gave each word measured. "Thirty days, my lord."

"A _month_ ," said Julius in a mockery of surprise. _Cheater_. "We must decide, you and I, whether Cassian insults your riding or my judgement. Is he hoping, if I decline, and he gives time, that I'll reconsider?" The pull of his face sobered in aversion. "Don't answer that. You'll speak foolishness, and I value your head."

It was, Revaris couldn't help but notice, the only obstacle obscuring Julius' view of an unfortunate copper piece showing three local goddesses in erotic congress with a bear.

Now, this fine head bent politely. "The king offers you the Soothspeaker."

Oh. Oh, that was _him_. Revaris' mouth opened without sound, tongue caught in a tremor. Oh, he was _being given away_. Oh, that was simply so wrong. So terrible.

"No," said Julius, absent of horror, "Your king offers me custody of a war criminal he has carefully and joyfully and _wrongfully_ withheld from the public retribution due."

That was _him_ again, isn't it? Revaris looked up to ask, but the intendant only let his wince carry through the enduring stroke of his hand. Julius' persistence manifested verbally. Resolutely.

"Your king offers me Aelius Revaris Dramaste. Say it. I want to see your disgust of his betrayal dawn on your face as you say it."

The intendant swallowed with difficulty. "The king… offers… Aelius Revaris Dramaste."

The impossible weight of the moment was disregarded. If anything, it gave Julius heat. "Cassian _offers_. He offers what isn't his to give. Izanthe doesn't abide slavery."

The intendant's hand stilled entirely. He sighed. "…custody on count of dementia, my lord. Soothspeakers enter… provisional stewardship after a year in the Keep. The… man, Aelius Revaris Dramaste served for five."

"Damn me, _lawful_ slavery," translated Caim, with an upward turn of his brows.

The intendant added nothing. The intendant, withdrawing his hand and his proximity, seemed to have extricated himself from an impossibly troubling situation with the parting reluctance of a man who could not afford regrets, but still had them. It chilled Revaris to his tips and his toes – not the abandon, but his acute perception of it. His sympathy.

"You've done your duty," said Julius, and rose when the intendant does, drew him in the customary embrace reserved as a token of affection for the man the envoy represented, "I know what Cassian gives me. I know what he asks. You'll have your answer within the hour."

And then, with a superficial turn of a door too broken to close, they were four.

-

They were four, but Caim did war against their wine like a legion of twice their number, bereft of the magnanimity to give its enemy the time to mourn the fallen.

He did not waver, between his drink and summoning more bottles in flight towards him, except to pass Julius his cup. "Cassian. Izanthe. Invasions. _Revaris_? Julius, I blinked. What in fire's name has this world come to?"

Dust. Drama. Debris. Death. Revaris had done with care. He curled within himself on the floor, the white of his cloak perfectly deformed by dirt and prints of ink, where he had fallen in tunnels, or on freshly copied maps. It was quiet in his head, too quiet and too still without the stream of hostile shapes at the world's end of his vision, without the whispers of his corpses. It was quiet, and lonely, and he was cold.

He did not dismount from awareness long. Movement woke him from lethargy, and he was pushed, only the littlest bit, to allow Aubert to sit, this time to his right. They stared at each other, waiting, weighing entitlement against intimacy, then Aubert's hand blundered through Revaris' hair in what the man must have thought was a natural assumption of a welcome service.

It wasn't.

Julius and Caim exchanged cautious glances, to the roll of Aubert's great, long lashed blue eyes. "He won't _bite_ me. It's true that… that is to say, I've heard Soothspeaking does… things. To a mind. Things that shouldn't happen. But he's… "

Beyond the hope of Aubert's verbal assessment. Beyond words. Beyond pleased sighs, when the turn of a finger scratched behind his ear just so.

No, Revaris wasn't beyond that.

Caim snorted. "Oh, he looks fine to me. Splendid. Pretty? Prettier than we'd expected? Of course, I think…" He paused as if to urge his memory along. "He spread to get his apprenticeship, back in the day, didn't he, Julius? The rumours were – he did, didn't he? With your master?"

Julius shrugged bonelessly. "Only with our master?"

Their master, with eyes of winter and claws like a vulture and the voice of every virtue. Their master, who'd left them lumbering on horses, and who'd given armour and words of steel and the careless presumption that victory did not find men, but craftsmanship with them.

Revaris twitched.

Caim took no notice, said, "Yes, then I suppose I should have expected pretty." He admired his cup. "I didn't expect 'alive.' But I should have expected 'pretty.'"

" 'Pretty,'" said Aubert, leaning down to trace Revaris' eyelids with his lips. This was, again, unwelcome. This was unwelcome, but he did not retreat – physically.

Aubert sighed. "It used to be 'brilliant.' He used to be _brilliant_. Look at him." Revaris shouldn't. "Look at what they've done to him." Revaris couldn't. "Look at what they're letting you do to him." Revaris wouldn't.

"Look, spirits, how you're _rambling_ ," Caim groaned.

"If Julius didn't lead the game among practitioners - "

"But he does."

"If his endorsement didn't weigh as much - "

Caim laughed outright. "But it _does_. If Julius declares for Cassian as rightful king, every sorcerer in this land and the next will declare. For Cassian. This is why we are here. This is why we receive the good bribes. This is why," he stopped for a blissful sigh, "we receive the orgies. Don't pretend anything's different merely because now you dislike the stakes."

Aubert's voice drifted, one cause rendered hopeless. "I don't think it's as simple as saying -"

"I declare?" interceded Julius with humour. Then he capitulated under the finality of the words, paused. Shrugged.

"Tell Cassian's toad in the morning," he _commanded_ , then distracted himself with swatting Aubert's hand away from Revaris' face. "No sooner. Izanthians are civilized men. Honesty is very barbaric. He wouldn't know what to do with it."

-

And then they were two.

Finally, in the absence of witness, Julius committed violence against him: he took away the cat, only to rest it on Aubert's chair. This one blow brought the likes of hurt from which Revaris, mouth falling slack, couldn't recuperate. His bones had lessoned in loyalty to sublimation, watered down. Water. Water, beneath them, water with corpses, water and blood, water in his lungs, where worms thrived and festered, where he felt them erode the air, the flesh, the very being of him.

"Good evening, darling," Julius said, raw and restless and suddenly _drained_ , struggling to keep them both on his feet, anchored on paper. These were _studied_ maps around them, read and learned and ancient, and Revaris needed not ask for which war; knew, without traces in charcoal, which paths had twined under his horse's worn hooves, five years ago, which roads his army did not concede to taking. Knew, where they'd ridden through forest, where they'd met Julius' allied force on field. Where they'd slaughtered.

_Cheater_ , but that hadn't been Julius then.

There was tightness in Revaris' throat, larynx, and pharynx and the screech-scratch of sound.

" _Cat_ ," he whispered, slowly, brutally, pleading. "Cat, cat, cat, cat, cat."

"And mouse," Julius agreed, and pain pierced Revaris' finger in spikes and thorns and needles and the return of his silver ring. "Now, then. Cassian's crown. I'll wager you Caim's belt for it."


End file.
